Immediate past governor of Zamfara State, Abdulaziz Yari, has denied leaving the state in debt.
Yari said this on Wednesday through his spokesman, Ibrahim Dosara, at a news conference organised at the All Progressives Congress (APC) state secretariat in Gusau, capital of Zamfara.
The former governor was reacting to an allegation by his former deputy, Ibrahim Wakkala, who said Yari left the state in debt of over N251 billion.
“l want to make it categorically clear that the immediate past governor, His Excellency, Hon. Abdulaziz Yari Abubakar, left no debt on the state when he handed over the leadership of the state to the government of Alhaji Bello Matawalle.
“The press briefing by the immediate past deputy-governor, Alhaji Ibrahim Wakkala, saying that Yari administration left a debt of over N251 billion, was misleading, misrepresentation and a calculated attempt to smear the good image of the former governor.
“We wonder why the committee failed to inform the world that Yari left them N7 billion as takeoff or that the former governor had constructed hundreds of kilometre roads cutting across all the 14 local government areas of the state as well as provision of other dividends of democracy,” Mr Dosara said.
He said that the former deputy governor should have informed the world that he was the chairman of the finance and general purpose committee charged with the responsibility of contract awards.
He also said: “On the stoppage in the payment of gratuity from the approved sum of N2 billion, it was the deputy-governor that truncated it because the money was being drawn from the payment of fertiliser by farmers and currently many of our farmers have been denied the commodity because of Alhaji Ibrahim Wakkala’s action.”
